Total War: Rome 2

[Lallante]

Arn used to post in SHC. Pretty sure he isnt a developer.

[sarabando]

Theres an interesting live action trailer on the website: http://www.totalwar.com/en_gb/

Will be cool if you can somehow do the things they show in the trailer in game.

like bang redheads amirite?

[Fallout]

Emperors are people too

[Fara]

Didn't see no release date during my search.. anyone got details?

1 month ago I was so bored i re-installed rome 1 tw just because I like the setting so much. Stopped after 5 minutes because the graphics were so bad. cant wait

[Gesadt]

Didn't see no release date during my search.. anyone got details?

dude it was announced like few weeks ago, you aint gonna get more specific than next year

[Mona]

40 units to control on battlefield.

[Steph]

Release date in Roman numerals.

Well played gentlemen.

[Varcaus]

40 units to control on battlefield.

Fuck. yes.

[friznit]

Excited by this in a way that I wasn't by Shogun 2, even though since purchasing all 3 parts of the latter in Steam Summer Sales I've been playing it non stop. And then played a full game of Empire for good measure.

[Calgus]

Will inevitably buy this like I've bought every single one since the first shogun total war....

Lets hope it doesn't disappoint.

[Maximillian]

The recurring and growing problem all total war games have had has been shit enemy AI. As the games have grown more complex the AI has remained shitty - units attacking in order from fastest to slowest, inability to use the free-movement map, crap diplomancy, etc - with shogun being the best due to the limited options forced by the map.

I will wait to see with CA has even addressed this issue before I buy Rome II, or whether it is just prettier graphics piled on top of the old inadequate engine like Empire.

[Mona]

Every 2 games they get new inadequate engine.

[Mona]

[DevilDude]

The recurring and growing problem all total war games have had has been shit enemy AI. As the games have grown more complex the AI has remained shitty - units attacking in order from fastest to slowest, inability to use the free-movement map, crap diplomancy, etc - with shogun being the best due to the limited options forced by the map.

I will wait to see with CA has even addressed this issue before I buy Rome II, or whether it is just prettier graphics piled on top of the old inadequate engine like Empire.

well it has it's ups and downs, in shogun and medieval it was ok on the tactical map, but kind of broken on the strategic map (or at least very obviously cheating) Rome and Medieval II had excellent strategic AI but bad tactical AI, Empire and Napoleon were bad all around, and Shogun II has some very obvious cheating at the strategic level but one of the best tactical AI's I've seen.

[RazoR]

Shogun II has some very obvious cheating at the strategic level but one of the best tactical AI's I've seen.

Too bad castles are absolutely useless.

+9000 points for off-shore bombardment in the FoS but it is too accurate and not impressive enough.

[LobbyZ]

I didnt read the entire article but seems like they are with focusing on Legions and standing armies rather than an army being a collection of random units, so legions can gain themselves traits and build themselves reputations (if i read it correctly) and history, which again helps immersion. Im really looking forward to seeing what will happen in that regard. Ive never thought the way TW games did it with armies was "wrong" (it worked very well) but it would be really really cool if they managed to turn the game a bit more into the grand strategy (like EU3, CK2 etc) instead of just battle 1->2->3-> win game without making it too hardcore.

Yeah same feeling. TW's military campaigns have always been great but they need to start adding layers of depth and doing some overhauls. I don't expect them to start turning into Crusader Kings, since this is a Total War game after all, but some dimensions of that would go a long way. For example, a levy system would be interesting so you don't always have standing armies, though I suppose Rome would be the exception since they always had standing professional legions stationed at the borders, but certainly in other time eras/factions this would make sense.

TW games tend to get really shit near the end as you just plaster your colour over the entire map, it would be good if they could properly model the difficulty of maintaining such a huge empire...

On the other hand maybe I've just been playing far too much Crusader Kings 2 recently and have a hard on for that game.

Fuck mang, we should do CK2 sometimes. Also Romans did not always have standing armies, it was after Marian(sp?) reforms that it happened. Julius Caesar came into power _after_ that.

[Calgus]

The recurring and growing problem all total war games have had has been shit enemy AI. As the games have grown more complex the AI has remained shitty - units attacking in order from fastest to slowest, inability to use the free-movement map, crap diplomancy, etc - with shogun being the best due to the limited options forced by the map.

I will wait to see with CA has even addressed this issue before I buy Rome II, or whether it is just prettier graphics piled on top of the old inadequate engine like Empire.

well it has it's ups and downs, in shogun and medieval it was ok on the tactical map, but kind of broken on the strategic map (or at least very obviously cheating) Rome and Medieval II had excellent strategic AI but bad tactical AI, Empire and Napoleon were bad all around, and Shogun II has some very obvious cheating at the strategic level but one of the best tactical AI's I've seen.

In Medieval II your allies would park a full stack army next to your castles for a few turns then inevitably break alliance and declare war, SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER, except no one was surprised because it happened every dam time

[Varcaus]

The recurring and growing problem all total war games have had has been shit enemy AI. As the games have grown more complex the AI has remained shitty - units attacking in order from fastest to slowest, inability to use the free-movement map, crap diplomancy, etc - with shogun being the best due to the limited options forced by the map.

I will wait to see with CA has even addressed this issue before I buy Rome II, or whether it is just prettier graphics piled on top of the old inadequate engine like Empire.

well it has it's ups and downs, in shogun and medieval it was ok on the tactical map, but kind of broken on the strategic map (or at least very obviously cheating) Rome and Medieval II had excellent strategic AI but bad tactical AI, Empire and Napoleon were bad all around, and Shogun II has some very obvious cheating at the strategic level but one of the best tactical AI's I've seen.

In Medieval II your allies would park a full stack army next to your castles for a few turns then inevitably break alliance and declare war, SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER, except no one was surprised because it happened every dam time

lol allies just kill everyone

[Swiss]

I feel like they really need to focus on strategic AI more than anything; it's much more immersion breaking when an enemy faction assaults the exact same fucking castle 20 times with the exact same composition of a full stack of peasant archers and couple of supporting infantry (shogun 2 i'm looking at you).

Mind you Empire has utterly unworkable tactical AI, but even the mechanics of that system didn't work so it barely mattered until 16 patches later.

Really it's a reflection of the sad state of AI development in games, all the fancy graphics and mechanical polish, but it seems like we're still using 15 year old AI in games with increasingly large content.

P.S. I know nothing about how AI works, but surely we can do better

[Fallout]

Problem I had with Shogun 2 is that diplomacy was impossible because no matter what you did in that game everyone was at war with you eventually. The Fall Of Samurai dlc on the other hand I had the opposite problem of my allies destroying everything on the map before I did anything fun.